you need friction

question → answer isn’t learning 🧗

you actually need to try really damn hard to learn something new that is truly valuable. with the instant gratification that llms provide (question → answer → done), we lie to ourselves that we’re learning. learning requires a lot more friction than that.

if you’re doing an internship where everything feels familiar and you can dive right into a task without many questions, that’s great for the magnitude of outputs and efficiency you’ll have as a worker. it’s probably net-zero for your personal growth and learning by the end of the summer, though.

you have to throw yourself into the deep end of unfamiliarity, with a lot of cognitive friction, to actually learn something.

new things tend to have the most cognitive friction - new hobbies, new subjects, new social environments, etc.. but it’s harder to unlock the next order of skill in something you already have a baseline in. so the key is to seek the friction out. what do industry experts do in this field? what are the gaps in your knowledge from doing the same? forcing yourself to practice that new unknown is what introduces the friction. the friction is the learning.

today’s drops 🔎

• check out this program to build something real over the summer

• product manager internship @ tiktok

• deep tech week starts next week in sf